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Duck-billed dinosaur had rooster-like cock comb

By Chelsea Whyte

TRUE to its name, Edmontosaurus regalis had headgear fit for royalty. The flamboyant crest of the megaherbivore, which lived in herds across North America 72 million years ago, was uncovered quite by chance.

“It was a lucky strike,” says Federico Fanti of the University of Bologna in Italy. E. regalis fossils normally show no sign of any kind of crest. He and his colleagues found the skeleton in the characteristic death pose, neck arched back toward its spine. While removing the fossil, Fanti’s colleague Phil Bell of the University of England in Australia put his chisel between the top of the head and the rest of the body, expecting to find only dirt. “Lo and behold, there were bits of skin underneath which never should have been there,” he says.

The fleshy mound is 20 centimetres high (Current Biology, doi.org/qgg). Together with the rest of the animal’s skin, it was preserved in a quick burial, which didn’t allow scavengers or bacteria to do much damage before it fossilised. Fanti likens it to a rooster’s red comb. The fossil offers no indication of colour, but Bell says there’s every reason to suspect that it was brightly coloured, and part of social or sexual signalling.